


The Ghost of Your Hand in Mine

by thesolemneyed



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Divorce, Drabble, End of Relationship, M/M, honestly just kind of bleak, very brief blood metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesolemneyed/pseuds/thesolemneyed
Summary: A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the riverbut then he’s still leftwith the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it awaybut then he’s still left with his hands.-Richard SikenSeuncheol should be able to place when it is his marriage started to go downhill.He should be able to look at a calendar and point at a certain day and say, “There. That is the day my life fell apart.”And yet, he couldn’t.
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10
Collections: Seventeen Holidays





	The Ghost of Your Hand in Mine

**Author's Note:**

> This is another fill for 17HOLS!! 
> 
> Be warned: it's very angsty! Idk what was up with me when I wrote this.

Seuncheol should be able to place when it is his marriage started to go downhill.

He should be able to look at a calendar and point at a certain day and say, “There. That is the day my life fell apart.”

And yet, he couldn’t.

The decay had been slow, curdling the edges of his life and creeping inwards until he could no longer recognise the shape of his own heart.

In the early days, ‘Forever’ sat on their lips like a lingering kiss; a promise that they both intended to uphold with their whole hearts. 

In the early days, Jeonghan looked at Seungcheol as if he’d hung the stars in the sky with his own, imperfect hands, as if he’d painted the sunset sky in front of which they first kissed, as if he’d crafted the fragile world they inhabited. 

In the early days, they danced without a care, not knowing that the rooms in which they moved to carelessly were built from brittle matches waiting to light. 

Slowly, the lights in Jeonghan’s eyes hardened, brightened, created long shadows out of the notches of Seungcheol’s flaws. He felt like an actor, alone on the stage of his life, performing an unfunny comedy to an empty theatre; aware of the farce, but unable - or unwilling - to end the show early.

Slowly, the dark of Jeonghan’s pupils deepened. They grew into pits in which Seungcheol at first could tread water but, tiring, began to drown him. Like a wasp drawn to sweet tea in summer, Seungcheol quickly found himself out of his depth and struggling, feeling the curious, detached eyes of a mildly disgusted onlooker. 

Slowly, the words in Jeonghan’s mouth, which had once been gentle caresses against Seungcheol’s spirit, sharpened into easy daggers. Their bite caused nicks in Seungcheol’s skin and the words poured cool lemon juice over them. 

Seungcheol knew he himself was not innocent in the matter either. 

His mind drifted, became distant, difficult to reach over the long years. Even if he was physically in the same room as Jeonghan - which he wasn’t often - their minds remained stranded on separate continents. 

His words of adoration, which had once flowed thick and fast like hot blood, dried up, crusted over. They dripped from his mouth in a stilted, infrequent rhythm, never enough to quench any thirst.

His hands, once ardent explorers of Jeonghan’s world, forgot the touch of his body beneath them. No longer sure, unhesitating, they hovered over waistlines and clenched in pockets rather than lounging on thighs or curling into hair. 

The city was dark around Seungcheol as he prowled the streets. 

Every lamplight cast accusing shadows on the depth of his inadequacies. 

The bubbling river strolled alongside him, a companion in his musing of having fallen down the ranks from lover to stranger, in his contemplation of his own _strangeness._

Being able to bear it no longer, Seungcheol tore the cold metal band from his finger, hurling it into the river with a cry. It plinked into the water with no drama, no cosmic retribution raining from the sky. 

Much like the end of their relationship, it simply faded into nothingness.

And yet, Seungcheol felt no lighter, no less weighed down by the enslaving bond of his past.

Looking down at his finger, he saw that, where the shackle had once sat, the very skin around it was a different shade. Lighter, unaffected by the passage of time the rest of his hand had journeyed through. This strip of skin was the same shade it had been when he’d first slipped the ring onto him, drunk of the sweet wine of love. 

_If the hand offends you, cut it off._

But some offences run deeper than that, cannot be so easily removed.

Some grievances must be borne longer, until the flow of time and the kiss of the sun stitch it closed.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed (??) this!! 
> 
> Come find me on twitter! (@thesolemneyed)


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